This season is looking like it'll be the swan song season for a lot of Bournemouth's players. The guys who came up with them are peaking and likely won't replicate this kind of form next year. It'd be a good time for Howe to try his hand else where.

But I honestly can't see where he'd go next. Five of the top six are set and I really can't imagine Howe at United. Everton have Marco Silva. West Ham have Pellegrini. Newcastle are a sinking ship.

Maybe Leicester? Still feels too much of a sideways move, though I do think they'd be a good match.

This season is looking like it'll be the swan song season for a lot of Bournemouth's players. The guys who came up with them are peaking and likely won't replicate this kind of form next year. It'd be a good time for Howe to try his hand else where.

But I honestly can't see where he'd go next. Five of the top six are set and I really can't imagine Howe at United. Everton have Marco Silva. West Ham have Pellegrini. Newcastle are a sinking ship.

Maybe Leicester? Still feels too much of a sideways move, though I do think they'd be a good match.

Not saying he needs to move away immediately. He's young, he's got time. But he should be in serious considerations for any top 6 job that opens up next, and don't worry, there WILL be top 6 jobs opening up in the next couple of years, not only United.

Eddie Howe is a really good coach, he is playing good football with Bournemouth not only this season, but now it's more noticeable because of great results. He is young too, but I don't know yet what is his potential, he needs to be given more time.

If Pochettino goes to Real for example I can see Tottenham going for him. Tottenham had success with hiring Pochettino from a weaker PL club (Southampton), so they might try something similiar again if he eventually leaves.

@Firenze wrote:There is that possibility. But Tottenham nowadays can absolutely attract an elite coach. So they'll probably aim higher. Their status has gone up in the last few years despite winning nothing.

There's a limited number of so-called top coaches around. Many of the biggest managerial names are last generation and winding down their careers. New names have to start moving up the ladder. You look around at the managers in some of the biggest jobs in Europe and you get names like Tuchel, Valverde, Di Francesco. Who just a few years ago were more or less in the same situation as someone like Howe, doing well at a midtable team.

@Firenze wrote:There is that possibility. But Tottenham nowadays can absolutely attract an elite coach. So they'll probably aim higher. Their status has gone up in the last few years despite winning nothing.

@Firenze wrote:There is that possibility. But Tottenham nowadays can absolutely attract an elite coach. So they'll probably aim higher. Their status has gone up in the last few years despite winning nothing.

This is the same club that bought 0 players this summer. You are severely underestimating Tottenham's small club mentality.

@Firenze wrote:There is that possibility. But Tottenham nowadays can absolutely attract an elite coach. So they'll probably aim higher. Their status has gone up in the last few years despite winning nothing.

This is the same club that bought 0 players this summer. You are severely underestimating Tottenham's small club mentality.

They just built a 1 billion € stadium, I think that has something to do with that

Some very interesting TLDR posts from a Bournemouth guy on Redcafe about Howe and their club. After reading it, I am more in favour of seeing him at United actually.

Spoiler:

Since you're on this subject I thought it might be of interest to some to have a fans-eye view of the Eddie Howe years at AFCB pre-Premier League since that will be a mostly closed book to most of you. I'll run through them one-by-one as I get time and it may give you a little more insight into some of the challenges he's faced down the years.

For my first post I'll need to start with a potted history of the club since around the start of the 90s so you can get an idea of who we are. Not the media story, the real us. Don't worry, I'm not offended that you don't know. Why should you? We're so League One it's ridiculous. We've spent most of our history in the third tier, quite possibly more than anyone else, with a few periods in the fourth tier and (pre-Howe) a very brief stint in the second tier when Harry Redknapp was getting the hang of the management business with us. After Harry, and for this I offer my sincere apologies, we gave a managerial chance to one of our midfield hard-man getting him on the way in that career. Yes, we are responsible for Tony Pulis. Sorry, again.

As an aside, Pulis actually did very well considering the players that were sold from under him but fan discontent at his style of football meant he was given the heave-ho. Ever since I've followed the club in the mid-80s we've always tried to pass the ball. Sure, at a League One standard but the intent was there and nobody was happy with the switch to Pulis-ball.

Anyway, post-Redknapp there were huge financial issues (I'm not saying the warning signs were there for others but... well they were) which ultimately left the club on the verge of going out of business come the late 90s. There was no 'white knight' and ultimately the club were only saved by fans chucking in as much money as they could and an administration. Not funded by some consortium of well off local business men. Literally the people on the terraces digging deep into their personal household finances. We ended up labelled at the time as the first community run/owned club in Europe, something which has been copied (in a much better way... lots of mistakes were made) many times since.

Out of immediate financial danger and with a newly strenghened bond with fans the big problem was the stadium was on the verge of being condemned and had to be rebuilt. There was no delaying it, no option it just had to be done. This created a new debt which crippled the club and (skipping over the details) would end up with the fans having to give up their golden share, the stadium being sold on a sale-and-leaseback deal (one reason why it hasn't been expanded since we came up) and a whole cast of characters straight from the lower league football cliche play-book being involved in the club. Unfortunately, one of these forgot to check the VAT situation on the sale and leaseback and suddenly the club were landed with a big unexpected VAT bill and back in a mess financially again. Ultimately and unfortunately administration was the only option.

It's one of those strange things were the administration wasn't brought about by profligate spending on players but just circumstances. A forced stadium rebuild and the debt it created just meant it was a very long domino effect.

At the time we were in League One and managed by Harry's oft-right hand man Kevin Bond. The 10 point penalty that season for going into administration put us right in the relegation mire. I recall the long (from Bournemouth it is very long) train journey away to Carlisle on the last day of the season where, after a remarkable run of form, a win may have kept us up despite the point loss. We drew 0-0 and were relegated to League 2 by the thinnest of margins.

The Football League weren't finished with us. The next season in League 2 we would start on -17 points due to the way we exited administration. The same season Luton started on -30 points for similar reasons. The board decided Bond wasn't the man to turn that situation around and so he left and was replaced by one of our former strikers, Jimmy Quinn, a renowned long ball merchant. The football under his was utterly atrocious and the results weren't much better. Come Christmas we were still deep in trouble so at the turn of the year he was sacked.

With no money, the club offered the job to the cheap option. The only option they could afford, an ex-player that was doing some work with the youth players. I'll be honest, nobody was especially impressed at the time. Step forward Eddie Howe.

In one way it was very smart from the board. He'd been a classy youth team graduate in his playing days even playing for England U21s whilst with us. The only player I can remember doing that during our League One days. Not the biggest but great on the ball. He'd got a big move to Portsmouth but his knee shattered on his debut for them. A gruelling year later he made a comeback but his other knee collapsed on his first appearance back (one reason why I think he has a lot of time for players that suffer serious injuries... it's paid dividends with Callum Wilson). He struggled back again but the injuries meant his dream of making his way up the league was gone, his body couldn't handle it. Portsmouth offered him back to us for about £15k but that kind of money was way beyond our budget. The fans got wind of it though and on a now defunct fans forum pitched in £20s and £50s until we had the money. He came back and was serviceable in League 1 but sadly was half the player he had been. He did a job for us for a while but ended up retiring as a player early at, I think, 30 but with so many fewer appearances than he should have made in his career.

I said above appointing him was a smart move from the board. That was why. He was held in great affection by many AFCB fans and many felt they had contributed to his return to the club. Well, actually, they had.

So that's where we are. A club that had lived through 20 years of being constantly on the edge of financial oblivion, a fan base that had been drawn so close to the club before watching it all fall apart again, sitting adrift at the bottom of League 2 with the people in charge of the league pretty hacked off with the club, a demoralised squad fed up with often not getting paid and a rookie 31 year old now in charge of the team.

Spoiler:

Next up...Season 2008/09 (Howe appointed 1st January 2009)

It was a fairly inauspicious start to his managerial career with the first couple of results not brilliant but despite having no money to spend his transfer dealings were smart in the extreme.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but there were definitely some raised eyebrows when he tried to get club legend Steve Fletcher to come re-join the club. A classic old-school centre forward who looks like he subsists on cow pie, he knew how to rough up a defence but was never exactly prolific. Having been released by the club two seasons prior as no longer having what it takes to compete at our level he was now plying his trade at then non-league Crawley Town. A legend for us yes, but two years after being deemed past it somehow it felt like an odd move. It was so right though. It galvanised everyone. He had that run through a brick wall mentality to him and the other squad players fed off that. Exactly what was needed to lift the mood around the team and, even all these years later, our thanks to the then Crawley manager Steve Evans for letting him come back for free.

To this he added some other non-league players. Liam Feeney was 22 and playing for Salisbury but had never really made a step up to league football. Your typical rough diamond. Mark Molesley came in from non-league Grays Athletic on a free and Anton Robinson from Weymouth also a free. There may have been others but these are the ones that I recall for now. Since our scouting department was all but non-existent I’m still not sure how they all got identified but time would show it was some outstanding business. They all contributed massively to various results that season.

Despite now having a big lump up front (Fletcher) in, at that stage, a fairly classical 4-4-2 the team still tried to knock it about when they could. Right around the bottom of League 2 and facing extinction if the club were relegated (the realities weren’t hidden, everyone knew it) he still tried to get us to pass the ball. One reason why I laugh at anyone who says he only plays passing football because we’re a mid-table PL side with no real pressure of relegation. He was trying to get us to do it in a scenario of a genuine fight for survival of the whole club with players of L2 standard. That takes balls.

It wasn’t a glorious march to survival but we picked up results and looked a different team to who we had been. Ultimately the man with the mobility of a wardrobe, the aforementioned Steve Fletcher, scored the goal to keep us up in the last home game of the season.

There were signs that Howe maybe had something about him that we hadn’t seen before in a Bournemouth manager before but plenty of managers have taken teams on a good run for 6-12 months only for it and their career to tail off. It was the next season that really showed us what he was about and just how good he might be.

Spoiler:

Season 2009/10

I mentioned before that we weren’t the favourites of the powers that be at the Football League at this time. Having been relegated by the 10 point deduction two seasons prior then hit with the almost enough to send us down -17 the prior season (sadly, -30 was too much for Luton and they had succumbed to one of the relegation spots) a third season of punishment was enacted. A transfer embargo was imposed.

Not one of the ones you read about some clubs have had in the Championship lately where they can still sign players. This was absolute. We had a squad of 20 players and we were told nobody else could come in that season. As three of them were keepers of which one was a very young one a request was put in that if we released the third keeper could we sign another player instead. Word came back from the Football League that as long as there was no fee involved and the wages were appropriate that would be ok. We released the keeper then the FL changed their mind and said we couldn’t sign a replacement. So now we had a squad of 19 players.

The player that we had wanted to sign who had spent pre-season with us? Charlie Austin, then of Poole Town now of Southampton. Another brilliant spot from Howe but as he couldn’t come to us he went to Swindon Town instead where he banged them in (side-note, when Howe went to Burnley he signed Austin from Swindon so he got his man in the end!).

Meanwhile Howe’s half-brother Steve Lovell, a former youth team graduate who had carved out a respectible career as a striker in Scottish football but was coming back from an injury layoff, offered to help out his family member by playing for us on amateur terms. No signing on fee, no salary, nothing. The FL also said no to this. It wasn’t just that they didn’t want us to spend money, they didn’t want us to have any more players and that was that.

The embargo was water-tight. A quite odd coincidence that as they were so focused on ensuring we didn’t sign anyone since this was the season that fellow League 2 club Notts County appointed Sven Goran Eriksson as their Director of Football, signed Sol Campbell, Kasper Schmeichel and Lee Hughes amongst others. Strange times.

This left Howe with some serious challenges as the squad was imbalanced and he’d only been able to start to address that in the January but at the time he hadn’t really worked with the players as a coach so didn’t know what he had.

I’ll say it now. Forget everything that has gone since. This season is Howe’s greatest managerial achievement. I almost can’t find the words to describe some of the things I saw that season.

It’s fair to say our 19 man squad was soon injury ravaged at times. For example, here’s a link to a match report where we couldn’t even fill the bench:http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/eng_div_3/8328197.stm

Even then, many of the players that turned out for us were playing through injuries that they shouldn’t have done. The heyday day of the utility player was the 80s but in this season necessity was the mother of invention for us and Howe. I recall looking at the players line up and at least four of the players were starting in positions that were in no way natural to them. I don’t mean like how sometimes in the Premier League we’ll move King from striker to the wing tactically during a match. I mean, for example, central midfielder Anton Robinson starting as a right back where, as far as I know, he had never played before. Totally out of position.

Yet, we were still playing an attacking game. Trying to score goals and win games even with the most makeshift of line-ups. Trying to pass the ball and play the ‘right way’ if you believe there is such a thing.

Some of the forward play was ridiculous compared to what we were used to watching. An absolute joy to behold. The formation was still a 4-4-2 but you could start to see he was already evolving it with the movement around the pitch from the players far more intelligent than anything I can recall seeing before. Again, that may seem like a hindsight affirmation but I distinctly remember from that season a quote from the fan that wrote most of the forum match reports which, to paraphrase, went something like this “That was an attacking display the like of which I don’t know when I’ve seen last. Enjoy these days as Howe is going places where we won’t. He’s destined for the Premier League so we should just make the most of his time here whilst we can as we’ll remember these days for years to come”. He was almost right…

The fight for promotion and the title was truly on between us, Notts County and Rochdale but County ended up taking it only for the Middle East money to turn out to be a sham. We came second and Rochdale third.

I can’t describe the exhilaration I felt watching that season and at the promotion. Even the previous years achievement was celebrating survival rather than celebrating success in the classic sense. Sean O’Driscoll had taken us up from League 2 a number of years prior but only because the previous season he somehow got a squad relegated that should never have gone down. After years of doom and gloom and despite the best efforts of the Football League we could genuinely celebrate and all at the hands of a man with whom the fans had a special bond. It couldn’t get any better than that, right?

There were times that season when it looked like we couldn’t put a team out so there were a couple of instances when the FL relented and let us have a short term loan. However, the reality is injured players played when they shouldn’t have because we had no choice. I believe the career of Mark Moseley was ruined by the FL’s intractability that year. He played with niggles and ended up with one injury leading into another and another and… well you know how those careers go. He’s definitely a player that should have enjoyed a solid League 1 career at least and missed out as a result. He was aggressive and skillful, things which don’t often go hand-in-hand in a player at that level. He’s now on our coaching staff though – Howe doesn’t forget people that make a contribution – and he is apparently a very highly rated member of the staff.

Saving us the previous season Howe had picked up some headlines, not least because at the time he was the youngest manager in the league and looked even younger, but this season people really started to take note. The way he had moulded this small squad into a winning unit that attacked with such verve, passed the ball in League 2 and taken us up was something special. There are likely plenty of articles out there if you want to search some of the coverage he got. I do recall it felt like a novelty to be reading positive stories about something related to my football club!

That season the League 2 Manager of the Season went to Rochdale manager Keith Hill for getting them promoted out of the division after spending 41 years in it. For me, that was a sentimental choice and I’m still in complete awe at what Howe achieved that year. As I said before, for me it’s his greatest managerial accomplishment and I’m not sure he’ll ever be able to beat it.

I'm afraid 2010/11 and beyond will have to wait until later in the week.